


The Shape of Shadows

by Frangipanidownunder



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-24
Updated: 2018-06-23
Packaged: 2019-05-27 15:57:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 11,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15028103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frangipanidownunder/pseuds/Frangipanidownunder
Summary: This is basically a re-write of season two, assuming that M&S start a romantic relationship after they are separated as work partners.





	1. Chapter 1

It was about two in the morning when the urge got too strong. He’d held the phone in his hand for an hour or more, watched re-runs of The Twilight Zone, chased shadows across his ceiling. He dialled. He held his breath. He reasoned that she would answer, she always had. He hoped she would be happy to hear from him.

“Scully,” she said with the grace to try and sound awake.

“It’s me.” The shadow that looked like a cat slinked into the corner and waited with him.

“Are you okay, Mulder?”

He imagined her sitting up, pulling her robe around her shoulders, hair mussed, lips dry. “I’m…I just wanted…” He knew what he wanted but he didn’t know what she wanted. If she wanted.

“I’m coming over,” she said and there was a note of fear in her voice.

“No, I’m fine, Scully. I don’t know why I’m calling so late. I couldn’t sleep. And I never really thanked you for what you did.”

“Mulder, there’s no need, I’m your p…” She stopped herself. She let out an abrupt sigh. “I’m your friend.”

That she used that particular word to describe her relationship with him both cut and soothed. He hadn’t ever been one for friends. His tendency towards single-mindedness, dark thoughts, misery had put pretty much everybody off through his school and college days. Phoebe and Diana weren’t friends. Even the gunmen could only be loosely put in that category. Had he ever had as good a friend as Scully?

“Scully, why did you come to Arecibo?”

“I came because…” Her heard her fumbling around, probably getting up for water. He shouldn’t have called. He’d woken her up and now she probably wouldn’t be able to sleep. “Because I think you would have done the same for me. And, frankly Mulder, I’m worried about you, about your wellbeing, about your future. You seem so adrift and I hate to think that all your hard work is going to waste. I’m worried you’ve given up.”

He rubbed his chin, trying to find words that wouldn’t let her know just how close she was to the mark.

“I haven’t given up,” he said, trying out a loose version of the truth. “I’m adrift because you’re not with me, Scully. That’s all. You were my anchor last year and now…now I feel, let go.” 

It sounded pathetic. He had never wanted a partner. Never needed to share the minutiae of a day with anybody. Never imagined his work would withstand such intense scrutiny. He’d spent his career side-eyeing the male agent paired with the female agent. He knew the routine. Distance, intrigue, softening, friendly jibing, hard case, drinking session, fucking, more fucking, feelings, then the shit show. He’d seen it so often. He’d lived it. But Scully was different.

“How many times has a mug said that?”

“What was that, Mulder?”

Shit, he was still holding the phone. Still talking himself into something or out of something, he couldn’t quite remember. 

“Sorry, Scully. I’ll let you get back to sleep. I shouldn’t have…” 

He hung up, lay back on the couch and saw the shadow-cat curled ready to pounce.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> NSFW

The knock on the door was so Scully. Strong but contained. It was three thirty in the morning. He must have fallen asleep briefly, his skin crawling with gooseflesh and sleep-heat. His throat was dry, his nostrils thick. His hair must be sticking out at all angles. He stumbled to the door and she was past him before he could pull his tee-shirt down.

“What’s going on, Mulder?” There was that light note of concern in her voice, the one that made her sound like a young girl. “You were mumbling. I thought…”

He sniffed the inside of a mug that lurked behind his empty cookie jar and spooned coffee granules into it. “I’ve spent my life mumbling, Scully. Nobody wants to hear the ramblings of Spooky Mulder. When…when I was fourteen, I met a girl at the beach and she started to hang around me. I spent that summer whispering to rock pools and murmuring to jelly fish. She probably never heard me in full voice until the time I stood on broken glass on the boardwalk and screamed.”

That raised a smile from her and she took the coffee to the living room and sat on the couch. She looked like a lost masterpiece in a thrift shop. He rubbed the back of his neck and bent to pick up the pile of papers and files from the coffee table. There was no room on his desk. She smiled as he looked around, exposed.

“It’s okay, Mulder. I don’t come here and expect Feng Shui. Put them back.”

He shuffled them into a neater pile and sank onto the couch next to her. “So what do you expect when you come here?”

There was a thread on the sleeve of her jacket. She picked at it. He should have offered to take it. He should still offer. Before he could process what he was doing, his hand was on her forearm, covering her fingers. Her laugh was gentle, somewhat surprised.

“Nothing, Mulder,” she said, looking straight at him. “I don’t expect anything. I just…I guess I miss having you around. I miss the teamwork, the camaraderie. We had something, didn’t we?”

Something. They definitely had something. His hand rested on her arm while he tried to find a witty comeback. “The spook and the spy. Sounds like a bad movie.”

This time her laugh was straight up genuine. It was delightful. His smile came quickly and easily. He’d missed it too. Not just the teamwork and the camaraderie. But the something. This laugh, this Scully. This was something.

“Who would you choose to play us in this bad movie, Mulder?”

The coffee tasted good, better than it had in a while. He sat back, reluctantly removing his hand. “Who’s the most handsome box office star at the moment?”

“Tom Cruise,” she said.

“Too short.”

“Arnie?”

He crooked his arms up and pulled a theatrically sad face. “Too buff.”

“Hugh Grant?”

“Too English.”

Giggling, she reached for her mug. “You must have picked up the accent, Mulder. Surely Phoebe wouldn’t have let her Yank boyfriend show her up too often.”

Despite the fizz of anger in his guts at the mention of that name, he let it slide. “What about you, Scully?”

“How many short red-heads are there in Hollywood?”

“Molly Ringwald? Nicole Kidman?”

“Not short.”

“Not red?” He turned his upper body towards her, felt himself shift closer. This Scully was different to the one in the office, the one who was so determined to prove herself, the one who listened, challenged and saved him. He’d rarely seen her so relaxed, so happy. She put her mug on the table. He did the same.

“Why did you come, Scully?”

The thread on her sleeve became her focus again. “Honestly, Mulder,” she said eventually, lifting her gaze to him. “I just felt I had to come. Compelled to see you in some strange way. It’s not even about our work, the files. It’s more than that. I can’t articulate it. I just felt it was something I had to do. None of this makes sense, but it’s how I feel. A lot of things haven’t made sense, since I met you, but I’m getting more used to it.”

Their knees touched. There was a spark under his skin. The thin fabric of his pyjama pants was nowhere near strong enough to stop it. “Do you like it, though?”

Her nod was barely perceptible but he took it as a sign to move closer still, his knee slipping between hers. Her exhalation was loaded with hope and he laid his hand flat on her thigh. There was a moment then, when neither of them breathed but his mind was running through the million questions and finding only one answer. The way she took his hand and lifted it up, pressing it against the bones of her chest assured him she was thinking the same.

“I like it,” she said, and something inside him exploded. He dipped his head, pressing his mouth to hers. There was no pull-back, no stiffening, no pushing him away. Their hands still entwined, she moved into him, opening her lips, encouraging him with her small sighs, her shift towards him. He reciprocated and they slid down so he was lying under her. Her body atop his was like being ensconced in a warm and pliable blanket. Moulded to him, it flexed and folded and draped.

He didn’t remember who initiated the disrobing, but it became frenetic within seconds. And then she was under him. There was no going back, there was only the now. Now was heat, shirts and underwear flying, leather against skin, breasts, tongues, legs, toes, sighs and groans. Now was kissing and tracing, guessing and fumbling, embarrassed laughing, glorious nakedness, hot, wet anticipation.

“I didn’t expect this,” he said, inching into her. She squirmed a little, spreading her knees to allow him his prize. “I just wanted you to know, Scully.”

She kissed him silent and he dared to move then, to discover. Her face tucked against his, her breasts pressed against his chest, her heels on his ass, they learned their way, their rhythm. He wasn’t sure if she’d climaxed but she whispered for him to let go. He tried to hold off but the pressure of her heat, her touch, her encouragement was too much. He shuddered and spilled into her.

“Scully,” he said, his voice gravelled with exertion and pleasure. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I couldn’t wait.”

Her fingers massaged the back of his neck. “It’s okay, Mulder. S’not that easy for me. Not for the first few times anyway. It’s fine. I’m good.”

Her centre was slick and as he slid out, he brushed a finger up, circling her clit. “Let me,” he whispered. “Let me learn what you like.” She pressed her lips to his shoulder and he continued, tracing the alphabet and listening for her cues. When he curled a finger inside her, finding that rough patch, she moaned into his skin. He felt her buck up and he pulled back just so he could watch her face. She held her breath, arms tight around his shoulders, heels digging into the seat, hair falling back over the arm of the couch. His thumb swirled and he dipped to take a nipple in his mouth. She sighed and loosened in his grip. Working faster, he moved his finger in and out until she lifted her head up and gasped.

“Oh, Mulder. Oh, yes.”

Her skin flushed pink from her face to her breasts as she came down. He dotted her face with small kisses. “Thank you, Scully.”

“I think I know why I’ve never been able to put our relationship into words, Mulder.”

He chuckled. “Are you saying we’re indescribable?”

“I’m saying I think we’re something, Mulder.”

He kissed her again. “We sure are something.”

 

Later, when she slept in his arms he noticed the shadow in the corner, grinning like the cat that got the cream.


	3. Chapter 3

Before, he headed into each new case not just with a profiler’s ability to look for patterns and a believer’s capacity to see beyond the edges. Now, he headed into each case with a desire to involve Scully in some way, and not just as an ex-work partner. Their relationship had opened up a space inside him that was slowly being filled with her. It wasn’t just the physical, though they had both become familiar with each other’s bodies and rhythms. Dana Scully, the spy, the sceptic, had wormed her way into his soul.

And speaking of worms, she was now peering into the jar holding a fluke.

“How big can these things get?”

Her laugh is golden. “Mulder, I…” They look at each other and he sees her under him, hair spread, face flushed, breasts soft. He blinks away the image as she speaks again. “I’m sorry, it felt like old times there for a second.” And when she gave him the specific details of the biology of flatworms, it really was like old times. He half expected her to roll her eyes and tell him he was nuts. In fact, it didn’t take long before she did. Instead, he rolled his own eyes and made some remark about not having to tell Skinner the suspect was a giant worm.

Turned out that the suspect was a giant worm. Turned out that somebody wanted the X-Files reinstated. Turned out, he couldn’t imagine sharing a bench seat opposite the Lincoln Memorial with anybody other than Scully.

When Frohike asked for Scully’s number, Mulder’s trademark smirk covered the secret swell of pride. He hadn’t told the guys about their relationship. He hadn’t told anybody. He had asked himself why, now they weren’t partners, what did it matter? But she was as keen as he to keep it private. So for now, it was locked in his heart and memories.

She’d flown to Pennsylvania for him. Even though they weren’t partners, she challenged him on every aspect of the case. And he loved it. He needed it. Subliminal messages about sex and ice-cubes were all well and good, but direct ones from Dana Scully were the most pleasurable.

That night, he’d stayed at her apartment. She cooked for him. Well, she tried.

“I think I’ve seen more appetising dead bodies,” she said with an embarrassed laugh. “I’m sorry, Mulder. I didn’t think you could burn mac cheese but seems I was wrong.”

His fork clanged to the table. “Sorry? What was that? Dana Scully admitting she was wrong? I think I’ve fallen through a wormhole where I’m living in an alternate universe.”

She kicked him under the table and then sighed, “sometimes I do think this is an alternate universe, Mulder. Because I’m pretty happy.”

Her smile was one of those that started fragile but became brighter and brighter. “I’m happy you’re happy, Scully.” He slipped from his chair and bent over from behind her, lacing his hands together around her neck. She laid a hand on the back of his. “I never imagined this in my future. Maybe all those tarot readings were wrong.”

Her head twisted to his so that her mouth pressed to his chin. “You’ve been taking tarot readings?”

“And tea leaves and crystal balls and cartomancy and aeromancy…there are so many mancies. And I haven’t tried half of them, but none of them predicted this.”

“All to find out if you’ll be lucky in love? I’m shocked, Mulder.”

He chuckled. “No you’re not. That is so me, Scully.”

Mulder had three reactions to the introduction of a new partner. The first was to laugh, the second was to punch his smarmy face and the third was to walk away. If he could have done all three he would have walked straight to Scully’s place holding his bruised knuckles and howling, never to go back. As it was, he tolerated Krycek the way you would tolerate a stray before turning it into the pound. Krycek was keen, followed him around, looked cute but, ultimately, wasn’t meant to stay.

In the autopsy bay, in a flash of what might have been good judgement or simply a show of support for Mulder and their former partnership, Scully refused to shake Krycek’s hand. She blanked him so well that Mulder had a welling urge to do a fist pump and whoop. Instead he chose to listen to Scully delivering her findings while Krycek coughed into the back of his mouth.

Krycek stuffed up. Scully’s office was trashed. He felt like things were rushing away from him, flying from his grasp. All that he’d worked for, all he and Scully had exposed, threatened to disappear. As he lay in bed that night with Scully pressed to his side, the words of Mr X rattled through his mind and he shivered. You’ve never been in greater danger. She snuffled and rolled closer towards him so that her hair fanned over his shoulder. He dropped a kiss on her head but she didn’t wake. He had much more to lose now than ever before.

The night’s shadows stretched long before him.


	4. Chapter 4

His nerves zinged. Adrenaline pumped through his body, rushing around alongside the feeling of guilt that Duane Barry was about face his demons. The shot rang out, chaos erupted. He found himself out in the grimy night looking down at Scully’s worried expression without truly understanding what she was saying.

She’d flown in to help him, to save him from his own need to believe. He kept that thought wedged in his heart as he raced through the streets to her apartment. If it weren’t for Maggie Scully he would have punched his fist through every window, would have taken his own hostages. Scully’s mother was scared but her fear was quiet, contained. His fear screamed through his blood and made his hands tremble with rage.

Skinner tried to make him go home. But the thought of sliding into his bed, where Scully’s passion and soft voice clung to the sheets, or lying on his couch, where her touch and smile resided in the seats made his stomach clutch. Krycek edged around him, filling his periphery but never occupying a solid and worthy space. It made him miss Scully more. His guts iced over when he thought of Barry’s manic rantings. He would know she was dead. He would feel it. Wouldn’t he?

And then the photo, grainy and blurred, but it was her tied and trapped in a trunk. All the way through the trip up Skyland Mountain he kept her image behind his eyes. Not the terrified mask he’d seen in Barry’s car, but the many faces of Scully that had soaked into his mind so that she came as naturally as his thoughts. He loved her more in those long miles than he could ever believe possible, but she was slipping from his grasp and his love was tinged with terror.

He could have killed Barry, would have killed Barry. His fingers clamped around his throat and Mulder saw nothing but that photo, her face. Grey specks in his vision morphed together and grew into inky splotches that swam behind his eyes. He saw nothing, no light, no future. He squeezed harder. Barry spluttered, scratching at his hands.

“Mulder, I need your help.” Her voice was clear and bright. In an instant, Mulder’s sight cleared. He let go and Barry gasped and coughed in the chair. Mulder rested his face in his hands. “Mulder, I need your help.” He heard again and this time he listened. He listened with his heart.

“I’m sorry,” Barry said and Mulder knew he was.

The shadow-cat sat poised ready to strike in the corner of his living room. He liked to think it was capturing his thoughts, sorting through them, using them as fuel to power it when the time was right to attack. The lights from his fish-tank cast a sombre green veil over everything. He’d had a nightmare. Scully pinned to a metal table by invisible force, terrified, in pain. She screamed his name and he woke, mouth dry, hair stuck to his head. X had told him that Scully’s abduction reached beyond any of them, but it reached right into him, into his guts and ripped them out. She was hurting and he was lying here on his couch watching imaginary creatures curl and unfurl in corners.

“I’m sorry, Scully,” he whispered. “I’m sorry and I hear you and I need you to tell me more. I need to see more. Where are you?”

He closed his eyes but no more images came. He thought about the hypnotherapy sessions he’d undergone a long time ago. How they’d terrified him with their stark truth. How the mind held onto the horrific to spare the body. How the body held onto the horrors in different ways. How he still hadn’t found his sister despite what he knew after the sessions.

What he did know was that Scully was alive. That much was certain. She burned through his blood and all the while he felt that heat, he knew he wouldn’t give up hope.


	5. Chapter 5

Every day without Scully killed. Every day forced the breath out of him. Every day reminded him how he had failed Samantha. Every day proved to him just how useless, how alone he was. The act of closing Scully’s file, despite the heat of her still running through his veins still, was supposed to be cathartic; was supposed to lead to some kind of closure, but he knew when he took the vampire case that it was just the opposite. Rage, powered by futility, launched him into the impulsiveness of investigating alone. It was not true that he didn’t care anymore. It was true that he cared too, too much.

Kristen beguiled him. Something about her triggered in him both a recklessness and a need to protect. If he couldn’t save Samantha and he couldn’t save Scully then maybe he could save this woman. But this desire to protect spilled into something else. Something desperate.

In the bar, Kristen was a dangerous but thrilling prospect. Vulnerability flared from her but she was sure of herself too, intense. “You’ve lost someone. Not a lover, a friend…” she said.

He didn’t respond. His feelings for Scully were not easily described. They were tied up in so much history, much of it unspoken. And while it felt like they’d been together forever, and in some ways their minds had been, the physical side of their relationship was still shiny new. Fresh. And in Kristen’s presence, in this hot valley, in this post-Scully world, there was a cruel part of his self that goaded him - you spoil everything anyway. In the moment with a vampire, with a suspect, with the worst kind of opportunity, simply presented him with the perfect out. He would only foul up his relationship with Scully, so what the fuck did propriety or protocol matter? Eventually, the relationship would rot and fester. But if he stepped off the cliff of control and let himself freefall, maybe the relationship would be preserved as something pure and perfect, in his mind at least. Yes, he thought, as she shaved him, better to let go and see whether he would soar or plummet.

He knew it was wrong when he slid into her, when he bucked and groaned and bit her neck in some grotesque parody of the case. What he really wanted was Scully. What he really wanted was that connection only they shared. What he really wanted was to be numb and to forget and to only look forward. What he got was something entirely different. Guilt. And that guilt lived in the shadows, waiting to smother and choke and disappear those in its path.

Melissa Scully was something entirely different. Despite his gruff responses to her soul transmigration BS he recognised her desperation to do the right thing by her sister. That’s what he wanted too. Their paths may have been following different directions but their intentions were the same. Scully should be top priority, but where Melissa wanted her soul to be released, Mulder had to make her stay. There was no other option. She had been returned and she had to recover. It was selfish Mulder through and through. He needed her. He’d already fucked up in the months she’d been gone. Now he had the chance to unfuck it, or at least spend the rest of his life trying. Spend the rest of his life enduring the guilt he deserved.

“You know, Fox… sorry, Mulder… you could spend the rest of your life finding every person who’s responsible and it’s still not going to bring her back. Whoever did this to her has an equal horror coming to them.”

“Including myself?”

The voice inside had been berating him, reminding him how foolish he was, how naïve, how unworthy. Melissa believed in fate, in karma. He just believed in his own mistakes.

The black-lunged bastard got it right. Who was he? Who was Fox Mulder but a worn-out, ineffectual, cheating bastard? Might as well add unemployed to that list. But Skinner wasn’t in the mood.

“I’m afraid to look any further beyond that experience. You? You are not. Your resignation is unacceptable.”

“You. You gave me Cancer Man’s location. You put your life in danger.”

“Agent Mulder, every life, every day is in danger. That’s just life.”

It was something Scully would say. He could hear her voice, whispering something like into his ear; he could feel her touch on his arm, reminding him that to fight on was sometimes the only thing you could do. She wouldn’t have given in. She wouldn’t quit. She would do something. And terminal intensity was something. But so was Melissa Scully. Funny that people would consider Scully and her sister to be polar opposites but at their core they were cut from the same cloth. They spoke to something deep inside you. Really drilled into you with their persistence and their reasoning, even if that reasoning came from entirely different perspectives.

Melissa’s words travelled around his brain, picking and poking at his resolve. “Even if it doesn’t bring her back, at least she’ll know. And so will you.” 

In the dark, where the shadows were deepest, he heard Scully. She was calling his name. She was far away but as he listened, her voice grew louder, stronger. He considered Melissa’s message. Scully was weakening. It was her time. But behind his eyes, where the shadows had been, he saw a bright light, a strong light. And he walked right into it.

“I feel, Scully… that you believe… you’re not ready to go. And you’ve always had the strength of your beliefs. I don’t know if my being here… will help bring you back. But I’m here.”

The light dazzled. There were no edges, no horizons. No shadows. There was only bright white.


	6. Chapter 6

The first case was always going to be the hardest. But not for Scully, for him. Scully had been returned and physically she was whole and close by and safe. The shadow on his heart lifted slightly but clung stubbornly at the edges. Scully was determined to go to Seattle, she said she was ready. And it wasn’t until Pierce said there was a charter flight waiting for them that his heart beat a little faster and the shadow spread.

“Scully? I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to go.”

“Mulder, I appreciate your concern - but I’m ready. I want to work.” Her voice was soft, warm but her eyes held firm. Before, he would have simply nodded and taken her at her word. But there was so much more at stake now.

“Well, maybe you should take some time off.”

“I’ve already lost too much time.”

They had both been lost. A flash of Kristen behind his eyes, guilt scorched his blood. He couldn’t move. Everything hurt. He looked past Scully, just beyond her, kept the auburn shadow of her hair in his periphery. They hadn’t made love since her recovery. She’d been so tired. So disoriented and he’d been so angry. But just the past weekend, when she called round to tell him she was returning to work, he’d sensed a shift in her. She was stronger. Not just physically but mentally. Her familiar smile played on her face. Her familiar fingers had entwined in his hands as they stood in his living room, lit by the glow of the fish tank.

“I’ve missed this, Mulder,” she’d said. “At first I couldn’t remember clearly, the things from before, but there was a moment in the hospital, when Missy was reading to me, I saw it so clearly. She was reading from The Bridges of Madison County and Francesca says ‘And in that moment, everything I knew to be true about myself up until then was gone. I was acting like another woman, yet I was more myself than ever before.’

“I…I hadn’t heard a single word Missy had read until then, her voice was just in the background. But when she said that, I had the clearest picture in my mind of us, Mulder,” she stopped and blushed, but squeezed his hands tighter. “All I could think of was how I hadn’t been truly me until we…until us. I saw a future for us. Does that sound strange? I hope it doesn’t sound strange.”

The small sound of her laughter filled his heart. He knew he’d found his true self with Scully yet he’d lost that person in the desperate clutch of a vampire. Scully chose that moment to lean in to kiss him and her lips tasted soft and sweet, but when she pressed her mouth harder against him he couldn’t push past his own conscience. Eventually, she pulled away.

“You’re right,” she’d said, turning to collect her jacket. “It’s difficult now. With the X-Files opened again. We need to set some ground rules.”

He’d nodded and let her take that notion away with her. Later, on his couch in the early hours, guilt played shadow shapes across the ceiling. Huge, gaping grey clouds swarming and billowing. He couldn’t close his eyes, because what he saw behind them was worse.

When he found her cuffed to the door, O’Neil’s infected body just the other side, relief tasted like nectar. She had survived. She was still here. Her skin was hot against his hand. She was okay.

Quarantine was like limbo. A place between life and death. It cut away at the shape of the day, leaving you with too much time to think. For Mulder, that was dangerous. Introspection was his speciality. He made it an art form. But this time, with the recent past and no clear idea of the future, and with Scully always next door, he’d ramped up his self-flagellation to epic proportions. After day 12, he decided it was just easier not to talk.

“Mulder,” she said, passing him in the corridor, “Mulder? Wait,” she said and her hand gripped his elbow, stopping him. “What’s wrong?”

“The doctors tell me nothing, and yet here we are,” he said, and tried to walk away. She followed, then stepped in front of him. He looked down at her and she folded her hands across her. She looked pale. Being inside for days would do that, but her skin was almost translucent. There were dark smudges under her eyes. He felt a twinge of remorse at his actions. None of this was her fault. None of his failings should be shouldered by Scully.

“I know you’re bored, frustrated, but…I’m here.” The gentle touch on his forearm matched the soft tone of her voice. He recognised her attempt at reconciliation and he wavered. It would be easier to reach out to her, to confide his fears, to talk. But if they did that, if they pursued whatever it was they had started before her abduction he would either have to live with the silent guilt of his reckless behaviour, or have to confess it. Neither solution appealed.

“You’re stuck with me, Scully. And I’m sorry about that.” He returned to his room and tried to find the shadows in the whiteness.


	7. Chapter 7

He couldn’t resist the jibe.

“Yes, and also I’ve always been intrigued by women named BJ.”

She indulged him with a brief smile and they spent the rest of the journey discussing the strange case. It surprised him when she pointed out the possibility of an affair between Tillman and BJ. It surprised him more when she responded with, “A woman senses these things.”

It floored him. It was a ridiculous admission that he’d never considered Scully to be in touch with her femininity. She was a scientist, a skeptic, his rational half yet she had deduced the affair through nothing more than intuition.

He dismissed her but her tight smile told him she was right. If Scully could see through two strangers’ movements and words and white lies, then surely she could see through his. He loosened his collar and let out a long sigh. What a fucking mess he made of things. Here was the best thing that had ever happened to him and he was fucking it up big time. Scully was being patient, saintly with him. She wasn’t pushing, wasn’t expecting anything from him but honesty and he couldn’t even give her that.

The case demonstrated the depth of family ties, the horrors of genetic makeup, the fear that generations could continue to inflict wounds on others in the name of history. How could he commit to Scully when he hadn’t saved Samantha? How could he give her what she needed if he couldn’t even admit to her what he’d done in California?

When BJ slashed at him he relished the pain. The sharp slice of the knife was a fitting punishment. He would bear that scar and look at it when he needed a reminder of his frailty, his guilt.

Melissa was at Scully’s making herbal tea. It stunk like weeds. She smirked as he grimaced.

“How’s the arm? Dana said you’d been injured on your last case.”

He looked at the band-aid. “I’m fine. It’s all but healed.”

“No scar?”

“It might leave a mark, but it’ll fade,” Scully said, coming into the room with her hair piled in a towel and a flush of pink on her cheeks. “He’ll be good as new soon.”

He tucked his chin to his chest and stood there, awkward as Melissa poured the tea.

“Dana said you’re back on those X-File cases. Paranormal stuff. Sounds fascinating.”

“It is,” he said, taking the cup. The liquid was pale green and a tendril of steam unfurled as he lifted it. “But it’s not to everybody’s taste.”

Melissa raised her eyebrows and for a moment she looked so much like Scully. “It’s green tea with ginger. It’s good for nourishing the soul, Agent Mulder.”

“Just Mulder,” he said, taking a sip.

Scully laughed and sat at the table. “Mulder’s soul is long past nourished.”

“It’s never too late,” Melissa said. “And Agent Mulder looks like he’s troubled. Is there something weighing on you, Fox?” She drew out his name and he swallowed more of the tea.

“Missy,” Scully said, a warning note in her voice.

“His aura is the wrong colour, Dana. If you opened your eyes you’d see. What is it, Fox? What’s burning away at you?”

The sound of his mug hitting the countertop was like a warning bell. The liquid tipped side to side and spilled out, leaving a strange coloured pool on the surface. He watched it leach out, dribble to the edge and spill.

Scully grabbed a cloth and stemmed the flow, dabbing away until the stain disappeared. “It’s okay, Mulder. Maybe you should go. Get some rest.”

“Maybe he should stay, Dana. Something’s going on. I can feel it. There’s a strange energy between you two.”

“There’s nothing going on,” Scully said, but her response was snippy, too quick and it wasn’t lost on her sister.

“You’re defensive. You’re blushing, Dana. This is the exact reaction you had when I caught you out with Jeremy Carmichael. You protested your innocence and then it turned out you’ d been making out in Mom and Dad’s bedroom while they were at the Military Ball.”

Mulder stepped away, grabbed his jacket, headed for the door. This was becoming dangerous. Scully was seething, steam billowing from her head. Her fists formed tight white balls.

“Mulder and I don’t need to make out in secret, Missy. We’re adults. The FBI doesn’t own us. We aren’t running around like teenagers hiding from our parents.”

“So you are having an affair,” Melissa said, standing tall with the news. “Why didn’t you say? Why all the cloak and dagger stuff?”

The door handle felt cold in his hand. He was in the corridor, striding away before Scully caught up to him. “Mulder, where are you going?”

“I think it’s best if I leave.”

Her fingers gripped his arm. “Missy is just being mischievous. She loves the drama. Don’t let her get to you.”

“Scully, it’s not that. It’s…we’ve…I…”

“You what? What is it? It hasn’t been the same since…”

Her voice hitched and he looked past her to see Melissa in the doorway of Scully’s apartment, arms folded. “I think it’s been a mistake. We can’t work together and be together. I can’t…none of this is your fault.” He rested his hands on her shoulders. She sunk slightly. “The X Files are the most important thing in my life. I didn’t think I’d get them back.”

“So I was just a consolation prize?” She shook him free and stepped back. “Is that it?”

“No, Scully. It’s not like that. I…you are too good for me. I should have known. I just fuck things up and it’s not fair to you. You are the single best thing that’s ever happened to me but…”

“But what? But it’s all too hard? The brilliant Fox Mulder might have to open his heart and feel something? Is that it?”

There were tears in her eyes, ready to fall. Her nostrils flared. Her chin tilted upwards. Her shoulders squared. Anger tinged every word. He deserved nothing less.

“Scully, when you were gone, I raged against the world. I couldn’t see anything but my own misery. I wallowed. It’s what I’m good at. The pity and the shame and the guilt. They spur me on.”

“What are you talking about, Mulder?”

“I took a case. Insisted on investigating it myself. I broke every rule in the book, I…”

Melissa stood closer, hands on hips. Scully glanced over her shoulder but her gaze levelled at him again, expectantly.

“I slept with a suspect. I missed you so much but at the time I thought you were dead. I gave up on you. I gave up on us. You don’t need me. I mess things up. I take and take and I break and break. You’re better off without me.”

The walk to his car was dark, inside and out. The interior was shadowy-grey, lit only by the dashboard lights. The engine throbbed to life and he drove into the inky night without a clue where he was going.


	8. Chapter 8

He was expecting to see ghouls and gargoyles, spirits and spectres. His apartment was cold, empty. It wasn’t a surprise when his life was devoid of soul. There was nothing soft or spiritual around him anymore. He was as alone as he ever had been, and it was all his own making. The shapes on the ceiling shifted with the street life. People out there living. Imagine that.

There was a knock on the door. It wasn’t Scully - he knew that sound, her timbre. He ignored it. But it didn’t go away. Turned out Melissa Scully was every bit as tenacious as her sister.

“Your eyesight must be very poor, Agent Mulder.”

“Come in,” he said to her back as she walked towards his desk, lit only by the fish tank. “And can you drop the Agent?”

“I can’t call you Fox, though. It doesn’t suit you.” There were papers and files and photos stacked next to his keyboard. She studied them.

“Those are private and just Mulder is fine.”

“These are horrific. How do you do this? How do you get through nights when you must have these images stamped behind your eyes?” There was such compassion in her voice that his resolve to block her commentary shrivelled.

“You do what you have to do to get through a case.”

“Like sleeping with a murder suspect? That’s not a medically-approved therapy, I wouldn’t imagine.” She sat on his chair and looked right into him. A car horn blared. The headlights caught the glass cover on the framed poster nearest to him and he blinked, closing off the scene.

“It’s okay, Mulder,” she said. “We all make mistakes.”

He laughed and when he opened his eyes she was smiling at him, a kind smile, not a patronising one. It felt safe to breathe again. He sat on his couch, rested his elbows on his knees and shook his head. “I make more than most. But Scully wasn’t one of them. That was the best thing that ever happened to me. She is still the best thing.”

“So what’s changed?”

He looked at her, red hair tied loosely behind her, soft expression, so confident in her opinions. “I can’t do it to her. I can’t be the biggest mistake of her life.”

“Don’t you think that’s for Dana to decide?”

“I’m not what she’s looking for. She deserves so much more.”

Her perfume was stronger than Scully’s. Spicy, darker almost. She touched his arm and he flinched slightly. “You’re very fond of talking about Dana as though she has no capacity to make her own choices. You seem very sure of what she wants and what she needs. You’re a psychologist, Mulder. Use that training to work out why that might be.”

“See yourself out,” he said as she shut the door. The sound of her walking away stayed with him.

Scully remained quiet at the crime scene. He hoped it wasn’t because of him. Melissa’s words had floated around his brain since that night and now he was paranoid that everything he did and said was self-absorbed, arrogant. He’d picked apart every conversation he’d had with Scully, viewing them with the perspective of the man he now was – single, sad, pathetic.

In the car, he tried for humour. “You knew it wasn’t UFO related from the start?”

“I had suspected as much.”

“Mulder, we flew three hours to get here. Our plane doesn’t leave until tomorrow night. If you suspected, why…”

The frustration in her voice stopped him. He fingered the tickets. He was doing it again. Selfish jerk. She was sitting next to him, having witnessed the monstrous result of a disturbed mind and he was trying to ask her out. He should have thought this through. Planned for it. But surely by now Scully was used to his tactless ways. And besides, he had to know where he stood, had to find out if she could put up with him and his unthinking, self-absorbed, arrogance again. He couldn’t wait until the time was right. He had to do it, right now. He heard Melissa’s words, Don’t you think that’s for Dana to decide? Yes, he thought. But she couldn’t decide if he didn’t ask.

He pulled out the tickets. “Vikings versus Redskins, in the Metrodome. Forty yard line, Scully. You and me.”

At least she gave him a smile.

The blood in his veins unfroze when she melted into his embrace. To hear her sob, to feel her chest judder against his, to know she had yielded that stoic self-control with him, for him, was like coming back to life himself. He’d been lost while she was missing. He functioned but he wasn’t living. He knew he couldn’t lose her again. When she was gone for months, he drifted, wouldn’t dare confront the depths of his feelings, instead burying his wilful ignorance inside a witness and pulling out with nothing but a gut full of guilt. But with Pfaster, the knowledge that he loved Scully was as true as the imperative to breathe. It wasn’t a conscious choice. It was pure instinct.

She let him stay that night. Her apartment smelled of vanilla. There were no shadows on her walls or ceilings. He pulled the blanket around him and imagined her, in her own room, doing the same. He fell asleep to the memory of the sound of her soft breathing .


	9. Chapter 9

They worked hard, they worked well, flowing back into the routine of their partnership. The cases were challenging and kept them away from home. There had been no time or space to talk. For the most part he was happy with that. Laying bare emotions meant being vulnerable. But there were times, in the moments between talking, at the closing of the office door in the evening, with the sounds of their footsteps in the car park, in the longer-than-usual glance over morning coffee, moments when he just wanted to fall at her feet and declare the size and shape of his love for her. How it woke him in the morning, how he fell asleep with it pressed against him at night, how he tasted it, smelt it, touched it, heard it. How he needed it. But where to start?

There were no adequate words to describe what they were to each other now. It was almost as though they’d arrived in a place, a setting, rather than a relationship. They were moored at a spot somewhere between friends and lovers. They had history. Recent history, but how did they get from the past to the present so they could create a future?

The strange case of Mrs Paddock and the murderous teachers of Crowley High School had ended in them soaked to the skin and without a suspect to charge. Their rooms were not adjoining and he felt the distance between them even more so when he lay on his bed and flicked through the channels waiting to her the soft murmurings of Scully talking to her mother or sister after a case. All he got was the rhythmic thump and theatrical moanings from the couple next door. After round three, he slapped the wall with his open hand and decided a trip to the ice machine would be the only way around his insomnia.

A soft glow emanated from behind the flimsy drape across Scully’s windows. Flickering television light. Ice in hand, he knocked. She answered, pulling her robe around her.

“Hi,” she said, cautiously. “Did you bring the whiskey too?”

He held up the bag and pulled a face. “Hopefully we can find other ways to warm up.”

The words left his mouth before he could think. She had the grace to smile politely as she let him in. The bed loomed from the centre of the room, sheets slightly mussed, pillows propped up. A cup stood on the bedside table.

“I couldn’t sleep either,” she said, straightening the sheets and sitting on the bed. She looked at the empty chair opposite and he deposited the ice in the sink before taking his position. “Those people, Mulder. Perpetrating their violence on children in the name of God. Convinced that by believing in acts of redemption and sacrifices they were healing souls. That’s so far from what I know to be true faith. I haven’t prayed for a long time, but I’ve spent most of the last hour doing so.”

“I guess people look for different ways to act on their faith, Scully. Spirituality, cultism, country music, marijuana, whiskey and ice,” he said, grinning at her, “we all have our little rituals, we all find ways to empty our heads to try to fill our hearts and souls.”

“Murdering innocent young people isn’t a way to empty your head. Sticking a needle in your veins doesn’t fill your heart and soul. Seeking a distraction from your problem isn’t a long-term sustainable outlook, let alone a spiritual or meaningful behaviour.”

The vinyl cover on the chair was cool under his legs and his fingers slipped across it as he leant forward. “Are you saying that we shouldn’t seek solace or comfort from the world around us?”

“Are you saying that those teachers were justified in their actions because they believed they were doing the right thing? That they thought they were saving those children’s souls by sacrificing them to a greedy and vengeful god? That their heads were full of the evils they saw around them and that perpetrating more evil made them feel better about themselves?”

Ice cracked in the sink. He clasped his hands in front of him. “No, Scully. That’s not what I’m saying. I…those people were possessed.”

“By pure evil,” she said.

“I think that only Mrs Paddock can truly know.”

“You think she was a witch?” A small grin played on her lips. She looked like she did when they first met. Skeptical, bemused.

“I know you think they don’t exist, Scully. But they’ve been around for thousands of years.”

“Like spirits and genies and leprechauns and vampires.”

He stood up then, walked to the bed. She shifted across slightly and the mattress sagged as he sat, leaving their thighs touching. “I’m sorry, Scully.” Her hand was cool on his thigh. The pop of ice cracking punctuated the moment. He covered her hand. “I’ve missed you. I missed you then and I miss you now.”

“You slept with a suspect, Mulder.” Her gaze was focused on the bedspread, threads pilling from the flowery design.

“A vampire, Scully. They do exist. And I can’t explain why. Saying that I did it because you weren’t there isn’t exactly the reason. It was more like…it was like a punishment. Self-inflicted.”

“Mulder, not many men would describe sleeping with an attractive young woman when their…partner… was…away as a punishment.”

She hadn’t moved her hand away. He held on to that fact when he shook his head and let out a strained laugh. “I get that. But it’s the truth. I saw it as a physical release, sure, but it was a sure-fire way to get you to hate me too. It was my fault you were taken. If you came back, you’d leave me and have a better life. If you’d have died, fuck, I don’t think I could have carried on…and the guilt over Kristen would have given me all the more reason to…”

“Don’t say it, Mulder.” She squeezed his hand and edged closer. “None of it was your fault. Barry…whoever took me did it to stop you and your work. And I did come back and I don’t hate you. I don’t, Mulder and I can’t. You mean too much to me. But I’m just not sure about where we stand any more. I’m still trying to work things out.”

“She meant nothing. I swear it.”

A tear tracked down her face. He watched it until it fell. “I know that. And believe it or not, I kind of understand. But I need time. More time. I’m sorry.” She kissed his cheek and he felt the wetness from her tears.

Later, while he lay on his own bed listening to the whirr and hum of the fridge, he touched the spot on his cheek and tracked its shape with his finger. He remembered the bag of ice, wondered if it was melting or if she’d rescued it.


	10. Chapter 10

The case twisted and turned and before he knew it Skinner was dragging him about a dead agent and, worse, Scully was pissed.

“You’ll pursue a case at the expense of everything, to the point of insanity, and expect me to follow you. There has to be somewhere to draw the line.”

His gut burned. This was what they did. This was the X-Files. Why was she being so obstructive? “Three identical men are dead. A fourth identical man is alive and on the lam. If the pursuit of this case seems like insanity to you, feel free to step away from it.”

She didn’t have to sigh. It hardly seemed like she was breathing. Yet he heard her frustration and disappointment at his tone loud and clear. He probably shouldn’t have put it so bluntly. They’d been making progress. They had spent time talking. They’d been for coffee on weekends. She suggested a movie just last week. But that Scully was supposed to be confined to private time. Right now, he wanted the Scully that would go to the ends of the earth with him to find justice. He needed her.

Eventually, she looked at him and spoke. “An FBI agent died because of our pursuit of this case.”

He didn’t respond directly. He noticed there was a softening, a repositioning of her shoulders. A plea for a truce? He had a gut feeling this case was somehow pivotal. And she would either follow him to the turning point or not.

The fizz in his stomach was a slower boil now. He looked up at her. “Those are the risks we take. You either accept them or you don’t. We all draw our own lines.”

Seeing his father always reset his mind to those dark days after Samantha disappeared. He couldn’t be in the same space as Bill Mulder without hearing the accusatory whispers of his mother, the monosyllabic responses from his father, without remembering the tightness in his mother’s jaw, the way his father closed doors with a quiet fury. Those days the shadows in his childhood bedroom grew luminous, gargoyle faces cackling, monstrous clawed birds swiping at him, tidal waves pulling him under. It was choking then and now, when he looked at his father, smoking and pacing, he couldn’t help but feel the constriction in his throat.

“What is it, Dad?”

“The certainty… becomes a comfort that allows you to move on. We bury our memories so deep after all that has been destroyed… never expecting…”

Mulder swallowed, looked through the window. “Who is Mom talking to?” The younger woman had long wavy hair and an expression caught between sadness and hope. He felt bile rise, the shadowy cloak of fear and disbelief wrapping itself around him as his father answered.

“Your sister.”

When Scully didn’t answer he felt a whip of guilt. He hadn’t told her where he was going. He hadn’t been thinking of anything other than the case, his family, himself. He put the phone down and listened with horror as the woman who claimed to be his sister told him that the man they were tracking could disguise himself as anyone. Scully was in danger. It was happening all over again. He drove to the motel with the hard stone of failure sitting solidly in his gut.

Skinner was confused, reticent, but in the end put in the order and positioned the sniper and other men. Skinner was a force to be reckoned with when he was in control and for now, Mulder was more than relieved to let him do his thing.

Scully was bloodied and clutched at her captor’s hands as she tried to maintain dignity and control. Mulder, I need your help. Her voice rang around his head as he watched Samantha walk over to them. He recalled her unfettered sobbing after Pfaster. He couldn’t fathom how she could bear any more. Her resilience astounded him. Yet here she was, chin up, wide-eyed and alive.

Samantha complied with the demands as planned but mistimed her attack and as Mulder watched her fall the stone of failure exploded so that shards of panic and terror scratched at his insides.

Later, as he leant against the guardrail on the bridge, concern quietened Scully’s voice. “Why didn’t you tell me it was your sister, Mulder?”

“Because you would never have let me go through with it,” he said and it was the truth. She would have sacrificed herself and he would have saved one only to lose the other anyway. He was never destined to have them both in his life at the same time.

It wasn’t the blinding cold that he would remember. It wasn’t the lights above him, slowly getting closer. It wasn’t the pain in his eyes, shoulder, his back, his ribs. It wasn’t the shapeshifter, hell-bent on proving who was stronger, smarter. It wasn’t the likelihood that he would die before he could prove he’d seen an alien craft. It was Scully’s voice, on the bridge, so soft and so worried for him. He closed his eyes, the searing lights behind them melding together so there were no shadows, no darkness.


	11. Chapter 11

Shadows flitted across his mind. Sharp at the edges, pricking his consciousness. Animalistic shapes prowling, claws ominously silent. He tried to speak but his throat was ragged, burnt. His chest hurt, his limbs ached, the toes on his right foot throbbed. At first, he couldn’t prise his eyes open but he sensed her there. Maybe it was nothing, maybe it was that he’d seen her when he’d opened his eyes earlier but he couldn’t remember, maybe they did have a connection, but he knew it was Scully on that chair. And she smiled.

The story she told him was incredible. She’d saved his life because the virus was inhibited by the cold. Detective Weiss hadn’t been so lucky. He could feel how close they were to the truth and she’d taken them there.

“You still need to rest,” she said, stirring the soup he’d found in the back of a cupboard. “Your body shut down, frostbite can be serious and we have no idea what the long-term effects of the virus will be.” 

He nodded. Still doctoring even off duty. “No matter how many times I try to shake you off, you still keep coming after me.”

“It’s something I’m actively working on,” she said, pouring his soup and sitting opposite him.

“I’m grateful. I don’t say it enough.” He took a sip of the hot chicken broth and looked at her. “You saved my life and you’re here cooking for me. It’s almost like…”

“Like we’re partners or something?”

“Or something,” he said. The skin between his toes burned and he rubbed his foot on the leg of the chair. The soup warmed his stomach and she busied herself washing his benches.

When she gathered her things to leave, fatigue had set in. He walked her to the door but his mind was numb, his limbs heavy.

“What would you have done if that really was your sister, Mulder?”

He was too tired to formulate a proper response but his gut still boiled at the memory of that clone plunging into the water with the shapeshifter. “At least I would have known what happened to her that time.” It was all he could think to say.

“You bargained her life for mine, Mulder.” Her voice was contained but there was power in it. “I can’t believe you did that. After all those years of searching, your life’s work. You did that.”

His arms were around her before he could think. “You’re the most important thing in my life, Scully.”

She didn’t say anything but her soft cry of surprise stayed in his mind through the night.

His sea-legs deserted him as they aged. Scully’s diary entries were painful to read. She ate a cricket at a circus, he saw demons exorcised by gnarly European men and they faced a deadly contagion. But they didn’t talk because that was too hard.

On their way to Dudley, the trees cast dappled shade over the road. She was quiet, worried that they were being sent chasing dead ends.

“You know, Scully, I’ve been thinking that when we get back we should go out.”

“On a date, you mean?”

“We’ve done it before,” he said.

“I remember.” She gives him a strange look and he can’t help but think of the way their bodies worked together and the flush on her chest as she climaxed.

“I was hoping that we might start over, you know?”

“Forget what’s happened before?”

The road turned and the trees thinned out giving way to the shadows of the urban landscape. “Forgive what’s happened before.”

“Mulder,” she said. “It’s you who needs to forgive yourself. I…I’ve moved past it. But if you’re still stuck on what happened when I was gone, perhaps dating isn’t such a good idea.”

His heart burnt in his chest. She was right. Of course she was. Kristen Kilar might as well have stabbed him in the heart. He’d told Scully she was the most important thing in his life, but he hadn’t shown her. He sighed and looked for the turn off to the field they needed to see.

“Besides,” she said and smiled at him when he looked across to her. “Where do you go from the hottest date?”

Her humour caught him by surprise and he choked out a laugh, his heart softening. “That chilli sauce was something else.”

“Just like us, Mulder.”

He felt the impression of her hand on his thigh for hours after.

The fact that these townsfolk had been cannibalising themselves made him sick to his stomach. The thought of someone hacking off Scully’s head made him even sicker. She let him peel off the tape and she sunk against him, panting.

She rested her head against the window of the plane and he watched beyond her as they cut through the clouds. Below them, the shadows drifted on the breeze. She turned back to him and smiled.

“This date,” she said, “I do have one condition.”

He sat forward, the seat belt tugging at his stomach. “Name it, Scully.”

“I’ll go anywhere with you as long as it doesn’t involve eating chicken.”


	12. Chapter 12

He chose a Greek restaurant that promised plate-smashing and ouzo. Scully chose white wine and he determined to keep the crockery intact. They shared a mezze plate and he enjoyed watching her eat the dolmades because the oil stayed on her lips and when she smiled her mouth shone.

“I’m thinking about the pastitsio but it might be too much,” she said, two lines deepening between her eyebrows, just like when she perused case notes or a dead body. He watched them crinkle and he wished he could see into that magnificent brain of hers, wonder at the sparking neurons, decipher her unique patterns. “Mulder?”

Her voice startled him. She was giving him that familiar questioning look that usually preceded a ‘Mulder, you’re crazy’ statement. “I guess I was thinking about something else.”

There was a note of cautious surprise in her laugh. “Really, Mulder? We haven’t had our main course yet.” The waiter arrived and took their order, stringing out his response. She was still smiling at him when he topped up her wine. “And please don’t tell me I’m dessert.”

He chuckled. “There are so many things I could say to you right now and none of them is appropriate for the way things stand in our relationship.”

The watch she wore clanged against the table as she rested her hands on the table and leant towards him. “And how do things stand?”

A twinge of guilt pulled at his insides but he took a deep breath. He was actively trying to forgive himself, as she had suggested. “I hope they’re back on track to something approaching healthy and respectful, Scully.”

Her small laugh was a little too tight for his liking. “Healthy and respectful? They are not the descriptors I was thinking about.”

The waiter placed her meal in front of her and he looked at his lamb kleftiko. Did he dare play this game? So soon after agreeing to wipe the slate clean. Was she looking for something serious right from the entree? She picked up her fork and didn’t speak. He cut into his meat and the tender pink flesh yielded its delicious scents. He breathed in the rosemary and garlic and tried to focus on the moment.

She took a sip of her wine. “I was thinking more along the lines of cerebral and challenging.”

“Is that what you bring to the table?” Her eyebrow arched, but it was the quizzical arch, not the ‘are you fucking kidding me’ one. “I see your cerebral and challenging and raise you curiosity and spontaneity.”

“And to counterbalance your peculiar inquisitiveness and impulsiveness, I deliver rationality and calm logic.”

He chuffed out a quiet laugh. “You mean you run after me and haul me back in for a holier-than-thou ear-bashing while totally ignoring the evidence before your eyes because it doesn’t fit with your revered science.”

Her fork twirled into her pasta and she brought it to her mouth. She ate without looking up at him. He couldn’t help but watch the movement of her lips. She dug in again, and he held his breath. He’d overdone it. She had shut down. Shut him down. He pushed a lump of meat around his plate, feeling a glut of disappointment sitting in his stomach.

“Mulder,” she said, sipping her wine. “You have ditched me more times than my not-really-best-friend in grade school. I’d like to think it’s always been for your truth, that your ditching efforts have never been to deliberately lose me.” Her hand covered his and she must have felt the tremble across his knuckles. “You’re a man who leaps in, blindfolded, because it’s what’s in your heart that guides you. I have always been the opposite.” She shook her head as she chuffed out a small laugh. “I have a natural tendency to stand back, to observe, to weigh up my options. I like to know everything before I make a decision.”

A family on the next table clapped and whooped and a champagne corked popped. There were shouts of congratulations. And in the fray, a young couple leant over the table and kissed. Mulder saw the glint of gold on her wedding finger, the sparkle of a diamond. He looked back to Scully who was watching the scene with a misty smile.

“And what is your decision, Scully? It seems this is the place to make them.”

She squeezed his hand. “Since becoming your partner, I have learnt more about myself than in all the years before. You have brought out a different me. I’d like to think it’s a better version. I don’t think I’ve ever thanked you for that.”

He hadn’t seen that coming. “I hope I’ve learnt something about myself too, Scully.”

“What have you learnt, Mulder?”

“That I don’t have to do this on my own. That having a partner means being able to share, being able to make a mistake and not think you’ve failed forever, that having an opinion isn’t necessarily the truth. I think I’ve learnt to trust again.” He couldn’t hold back the smile that was threatening. When was the last time he felt so relieved to open up his heart?

“That’s quite a statement, coming from you, Mulder. Almost akin to declaring your undying love for someone.” She dabbed her mouth with the napkin and her eyes sparkled. “Don’t worry, I’m not expecting champagne and rings. I’m not sure we’re the vows and confetti type.”

He could show her all the ways he loved her. He could promise her nothing but the truth. He would give his life for her. But she was right. They didn’t need the declarations and the paperwork.

When he opened his eyes and felt the sting of pain in his shoulder, everything was a blur. His mind was thick with unformed memories that clouded his vision.

“You shot me,” he said.

She saved him. She’d risked her job, her life to save him. And now she was telling him her name was in files linked to a government conspiracy that dated back years.

“I want you to find out, Mulder,” she had told him. “I need you to.”

The smoke belched and billowed and he choked into the sleeve of his shirt. His eyes watered as he crawled and all he could do was pray that help was on its way. The last thing he thought about as he drifted away was Scully and the way she made him feel like a whole person, not just a tattered and frayed version eaten away by guilt and mistrust. She made him strong and lifted away the shade that obscured him.

He knew she would find him. He knew she would save him. It was just a matter of waiting for the shadows to lift.


End file.
